Honours:

DARKER STILL: A Novel of Magic Most Foul lands the 2011/2012 Winter Kids/YA INDIE
NEXT LIST as a recommended title by the American Book Association and is a Scholastic Book Fairs "Highly Recommended" title as well as a 2012 Daphne du Maurier Award finalist in the
Historical Category.

Awards include 4 Prism Awards:

The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess won the 2012 Prism Award in the Fantasy Category

Criminal Element on THE ETERNA SOLUTION: "The sheer joy of reading
Hieber’s work reminded me of what I strive for as an artist and the power that love and friendship have in fighting against the darkness—which, incidentally, is the culmination of her Eterna
Files series." Meghan Harker for Criminal Element (Read Full review with synopsis)

“Hieber’s formidable imagination is given free reign in this smart, boundlessly creative Gaslamp fantasy. She blends historical fact and paranormal fiction with ease, creating a world that is
lush and fascinatingly strange, and reveals her secrets sparingly, keeping fans on edge for more information about these intriguingly powerful characters and the ties that bind them together.
Patient readers will be well rewarded for letting this haunting novel unfold around them and savoring the expansive world and complex plot that Hieber has constructed.” – Bridget Keown for RT
Bookreviews Magazine

-

Asimov's Magazine, Sept 2015

“Eterna Moonshine of the Spotted Mind

The alert book-shopper will find an advance-publication quote from me adorning the front cover of Leanna Renee Hieber’s novel The Eterna Files (Tor, hardcover, $24.99, 320 pages, ISBN
978-...
0-7653-5674-5). Without much real acquaintance with the author, I was motivated to provide a quote based sheerly on the high quality of the book. So I thought I would use a small amount of this
column to explicate my admiration further.
The novel falls squarely into the steampunk genre, but exhibits a richer helping of metaphysics than is common in that game, and a bit more gravitas. Hieber’s MacGuffin is the quest for
immortality,
surely a subject that can bear the symbolic weight. In the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, a small group of eccentric talents are given the assignment of learning how to defeat
death. Chief among these is our heroine, Clara Templeton, a psychic. We pick up her tale when the project is at a crisis point after many years. Several of the researchers have been brutally
murdered, including Clara’s lover. Is the project doomed, or so close to success that it has aroused great powers?
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the British government has learned of the Eterna project and decided to steal or preempt it. They have assigned London detective Harold Spire to the case, and
given
him the assistance of the redoubtable Rose Everhart. Needless to say, presented with such a formidable array of allies and antagonists, many sparks, supernatural and otherwise, are going to fly.
Hieber’s approach to the “science” of anti-death protocols is fascinating. (She even gets in a nod to Clarke’s Third Law: “All sciences, at their zenith, create what is tantamount to sorcery.”)
Blending a kind of alchemy with unique “patriotic magic,” the pursuit assumes epistemological magnitude.
Says Louis, Clara’s lover (who continues to play a role as a ghost), “The key of Eterna, ma cherie, is to determine the boundaries of meaning. Nothing that may have meaning in terms of life can
be overlooked.” This is a wide remit, and eventually Clara comes to wonder if they have bitten off more than they can chew. “Eterna was full of the restless living and the restless dead. It
needed to die once and for all.”
Rich in conceits as anything from Alan Moore, Hieber’s novel mixes action and the emotional lives of its characters into a fascinating stew. Anyone who enjoyed Paul Cornell’s London Falling and
The Severed Streets will certainly cozy up to Hieber’s parallel depiction of questioning savants and heroes versus the forces of anarchy and despair.

Asimov’s Magazine - September 2015 - Paul Di Filippo”

DARKER STILL: A Novel of Magic Most Foul

- "This chilling tale will draw you in and keep you guessing until the very last page!" -- Read the whole rave review in SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE